Abstract
In the last decades, biodiversity preservation has gained growing attention and many strategies, laws and regulations have been enacted by governments with this purpose. The MicroBioDiverSar (MBDS) project, the first one regarding microbiological resources, funded by the Italian Minister of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (Mipaaf) through the Law 194/2015, was aimed at surveying, cataloguing, and managing the microbial resources and the related information of three Sardinian collections (Agris BNSS, Uniss, and Unica). While microorganisms were reordered and inventoried, a federated database, accessible via the web, was designed by the bioinformatician of Ospedale Policlinico San Martino of Genova, according to both international standards and laboratory needs. The resulting MBDS collection boasts a great richness of microbial resources. Indeed, over 21,000 isolates, belonging to over 200 species of bacteria, yeasts, and filamentous fungi isolated from different matrices, mainly food, of animal and vegetable origin, collected in over 50 years, were included in the database. Currently, about 2000 isolates, belonging to 150 species, are available online for both the scientific community and agri-food producers. The huge work done allowed one to know the consistency and the composition of most of the patrimony of the Sardinian microbial collections. Furthermore, the MBDS database has been proposed as a model for other Italian collections that, as the MBDS partners, are part of the Joint Research Unit MIRRI-IT Italian collections network, with the aim of overcoming fragmentation, facing sustainability challenges, and improving the quality of the management of the collections.
Highlights
According to what was recently reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the report ’State of world biodiversity for food and agriculture’ [2], the biodiversity at the base of our food systems is declining all over the world; and what is lost—species of plants, animals, and microorganisms—cannot be recovered
The information to be included in the database and their format was decided by examining the newly established guidelines for the submission of catalogues to MIRRI-IS, the information system adopted by the Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI), and by comparing it with the needs of the collections participating in the project
Microbial collections play a fundamental role as they promote the isolation, characterization, and preservation of such microorganisms, enlarging the spectra of potentially useful biotechnological applications for the safeguard of the environment and the sustainability of food production
Summary
The knowledge and conservation of microbial biodiversity of agricultural interest for the food sector assumes a key role, as preserving microorganisms of food importance means protecting typical national products and the entire Italian food and wine tradition, contributing, at the same time, to the sustainability of production systems. The aim of the project was surveying and cataloguing the microbial resources present in three Sardinian collections (BNSS, Uniss, and Unica, hosted by Agris Sardegna/Sassari, University of Sassari, and University of Cagliari, respectively), devising a federated database, to manage the information related to the microorganisms, and realizing a website to host the database, available at the link http://www.mbds.it/ (accessed on 24 June 2021). The creation of the federated database is the fundamental tool that, through the web site, has made the list of MBDS collection resources and the related information accessible online, constituting important communication channels for data and microorganisms sharing with the business world that operates in the agri-food sector, and with the scientific community, for study and research purposes
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